My father is the music.
My hearts rhythm a show of puppetry.
A creation of passion, constructed solitude,
Packing my world with repeated withering words
In which meaningless love wanders, until it is
Personal.
Too high, too drunk, too moved by music,
That ****** harmonica, guitar, microphone, even spoons
These utensils too forgetful to notice,
Other senses,
What past notes have created.
You are a monster music, that calms
And rages, carves out playgrounds of feeling.
Music sculpts everything, it defines me.
Yet, if it is truly bad, off key, or sharp,
Nothing sung, written, or played
Can bring the sound of stories solace.

I have a bruise to mark each memory
faded experiences, my tie-died vessels heal
hurriedly as a huddled leaf chasing a stream.

I have a bruise to mark moving
hip-forward, greeting our kitchen counter
first thing after threshold.

I have a bruise from stubbornness
we wrestled like chimps, my head
finding first impressions with tacky tiles,
your floor. You won our primitive match.

A bruise to mark the midnight hike,
I fell into the chaparral.
One to many beers, and a spin-tingling
fear of fallowing you up the mountain.
I slapped you for leaving me behind.

I have a bruise to mark our night,
when anger awoke arousal
Your thumb, your teeth, the main
suspects to my man made splotch.
A shower stinging stain trickled itself away
A fleshy fading peace sign.

I have a bruise from your discovery.
In a constructed pile of soil
You laid me down too *****
Stripping me of theatrical ties, temporary faces.
I willingly wove the canvas, for you
brave adventurer uncovered bruises.
The maps you didn't mark,
blacks and Blues you didn't write.
Paints that I lose so frequently,
like a child in a department store
that I can't forget my human fear,
Being Found.

But though you paint me purple,
break my veins like glow sticks,
leave me in the dark, and wrestle me
like a man,
You heal Me,
like rain to the grasses.
To feel again.

You crumpled contracted walls
surrounding my ability in
obtaining adventure, and your
Happy Bruises.

My shadow passed me.
He pulled the thin laces
Attaching him to my feet,
and disintegrated
as curtly as he tugged.

It would be one thing
if he ran a little ahead
skipping merrily in view.
But, my shadow
being nothing
more than my own,
became smoke in the fog,
tickling my impatient cheeks
and joined sky's fireworks.

I should be alright in his absence.
After all whats the purpose of a shadow?
He is nothing more than earths black mirror
a natural reflection of action.
He is the other account which
attests as truthfully as I
to the lies of an evening,
a sunrise, and the dimly lit
greys of the night.

I have been long without him.
And he mails me chills sometimes,
like the static of a flannel nest
down my bare skinned spine,
because my colorless mimed companion
grew taller than my
monotonous motions,
provoking my dark puppet to
seek more than I can provide.
While I wander in the lights
searching for him.